Looking back on 2014, part 3: the star of Monthly Girl’s Nozaki-kun

As a number of other viewers have already espoused in great depth, Monthly Girl’s Nozaki-kun was an unexpectedly enjoyable sleeper hit this year. The series’s greatest strengths were undoubtedly its cast of eccentric characters and the way in which they constantly turned various anime and manga tropes on their heads. From the emotionally dense Nozaki who nevertheless understands what shoujo fans want to see in his work, to the princely but insecure Kashima and the dependable ‘side-kick-like’ Hori etc etc, one-by-one, the show revealed them to us with some of the greatest comic timing of anything I’ve seen this year. Even our protagonist, Sakura Chiyo, challenges one significant shoujo manga trope, what with her utter failure at getting her feelings across to her object of her affections.

Nevertheless, there is only one person that can truly be called the star of Nozaki-kun. And that billing belongs to…

Our lovely tsundere heroine, Mikorin!!

“I’m…waiting for you to rely on me…so please notice me!”

“U-ugh! Don’t say such embarrasing things, idiot!”

As Sakura would say…”what a pain…!” But the gap between his attention-seeking antics and his inner shyness made him really, really amusing as the ultimate send-up to shoujo tropes!